


is it murder if the person you kill doesn't exist?

by daydoodles



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: (sort of), Anxiety, Blood, Character Study, Derealization, Dissociation, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Paranoia, Relapsing, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 07:01:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11938806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daydoodles/pseuds/daydoodles
Summary: Being stuck in your head is not so bad as being stuck out of it.





	is it murder if the person you kill doesn't exist?

**Author's Note:**

> Me? Projecting onto Jack Zimmermann??
> 
> That's literally all this is. I was dissociating and paranoid, got the urge to do this, then wrote Jack doing it to try and avoid it. I'll let you know if it works.

Jack’s shaking.

 

Or at least, the boy in the mirror is shaking, but Jack isn’t entirely convinced that’s him. He tells himself it is, because he wants it to be, wants to be real, but it’s hard to lie to yourself.

 

He’s tried all the things his therapist taught him. He wrapped himself up in his weighted blanket, but it only made the world feel hot and stuffy and fuzzy around the edges. He tried pinching himself, so hard it bruised, but he still didn’t feel it. He tried pulling his hair, but he had no reason to believe it was even attached to his head. He tried counting ceiling tiles, but couldn’t make it past five before his brain short circuited and he forgot what he was doing. What ceiling tiles even are.

 

He doesn’t have any alcohol or pills, or not any that he can get to easily, anyway. He learned a long time ago that dancing with the devil only gets you a ticket to hell, and his particular brand of poison is hard to stop once you start. He does have his Xanax, but that only makes him feel foggier, and he’s paranoid enough as it is. He knows himself well enough to know that’s not what he needs right now. And fortunately, he has exactly what he needs because it’s something so simple, so mundane, that nobody thought maybe he shouldn’t be allowed to have one.

 

It’s a stapler.

 

He wanders into his study before he even really realises what he’s doing, but then he’s standing in front of his desk and the stapler is  _ right there _ and he’s home alone and he could easily do it without anyone knowing. He needs to. He grabs the stapler, goes back to the bathroom, looks at the boy in the mirror again. He’s still shaking, but it’s worse now. Twitching, like something is crawling under his skin trying to claw its way out from the inside. Jack needs to let it out.

 

He sits on the edge of the tub, hikes his boxers up his thighs, and puts the flat metal blade of the stapler right in the center of his left thigh. Left to right, like reading a book. That’s how Jack reads the story of the shaking boy, too.

 

He pushes.

 

It doesn’t hurt, it barely even registers that he’s doing anything, but soon little drops of red are splattered across the porcelain. His thighs are studded with metal, but Jack didn’t feel a thing. Maybe this is worse than he thought.

 

He walks, or maybe runs, to the kitchen and yanks a knife out of the drawer at random. Blood is still trickling down his thighs, leaving a scattered trail of tiny droplets in his wake as he goes back to the bathroom, sits inside the tub this time. He’s yanked his shirt off at some point, and goes to work on his ribs.

 

The bite of the metal slicing his skin is enough to wake him up, barely, and he can feel the blood pouring out of him now, at least. It’s only a dull ache, but it’s progress, so he goes over and over and over again till the crosshatches are all open and weeping, his ribs covered in red, so you can’t tell where one cut ends and the next begins. It doesn’t matter, as long as the cuts are there.

 

He actually hates using knives, because they’re too sharp; too precise to cut a jagged edge, too pristine to cause any real trauma. But the bleeding is real, and that will have to do for now. He can almost feel the grogginess bleeding out of him, and for a moment he understands why doctors used to leech people, to drag the very essence of their life from them till all they had was raw instinct. Maybe they were onto something, after all. Instinct can’t lie to you the way your brain can.

 

He keeps going, dragging the knife across his skin whenever scabs start to form, reopening the wounds to feel a fresh wave of clarity. It doesn’t last long, but he isn’t surprised. It never does.

 

Eventually, he’s done. There’s no epiphany, no tears, no sudden profoundness to the thing he’s just done. There’s only a bloody knife, red-stained porcelain, and a smattering of what will become new scars he’ll have to find a way to explain.

 

He gets up, tosses the knife on the floor, walks over to the mirror. He closes his eyes.

 

When he opens them, the shaking boy is gone. In his place is a weary-eyed man with a look on his face like he just committed murder. Maybe he has.

  
Old habits die hard.

**Author's Note:**

> I guess I should mention the summary is literally just a [poem](https://poetofash.tumblr.com/post/155465159344/being-stuck-in-your-head-is-not-so-bad-as-being) I wrote a while back, made into a sentence because that's all it is anyway.
> 
> Also, if this resonated with you in any way, and you need someone to talk to who understands, my [tumblr](http://irlkent.tumblr.com) is always open.


End file.
